3MT winner highlights attractiveness of engineering professi… – MENAFN.COM

3MT winner highlights attractiveness of engineering professi… – MENAFN.COM

As governments across the Arab region prioritise transitioning to a knowledge-based economy, STEM-based education (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) has also become a mainstay of the educational system. Engineering enjoys a high social status in the Middle East, compared to most parts of the world, but does it attract enough women to choose this career? Sara Amani, a graduate student at Texas A & M Qatar (TAMUQ), working on her PhD in interdisciplinary engineering with a focus on engineering education, hopes to shed some light on this occurrence. In a research paper that won first place in the recent QU National 3MT competition, Amani spoke about the attractiveness of the engineering profession among women in Qatar. According to Unesco, women could comprise as many as 60 percent of engineering students in the Arabian Gulf countries. Women in STEM in Jordan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates fare better and feel more comfortable in mathematics than men. "There are a lot of women who have studied engineering in the Middle East, and I noticed that at my university (TAMUQ), we have a majority of female students. There are so many female engineering students, but there's still a notion that engineering is